Choosing just ten things for this article was, as usual, tough. I can think of lots more things to add: JWST won’t replace Hubble, it succeeds it; Hubble isn’t really a telescope, it’s a whole observatory; it has flown the finest UV camera ever built, which was so sensitive that a massive and hot O-type star in the Andromeda Galaxy could have damaged it (and once I nearly blew it up); when there is a strong meteor shower, they point HST in the opposite direction.

There are tons of things about Hubble that I’m sure I don’t know either; I worked on it for a decade, but in fact I haven’t worked on it for nearly a decade since. It’s a complicated and beautiful machine, and it changed the way we look at the Universe, maybe forever. It certainly changed the way scientists do astronomy… and I know that the best thing it did, the best thing it could do, was to let people see just how phenomenally gorgeous our Universe is.

It’s especially important to understand that even th0ugh we’re 22 years into the mission, the telescope remains a unique resource and is still doing frontier research. A few years ago the opportunity was offered to do extremely large multi-year programs of the sort that could not be done early on. There were 39 proposals submitted of which only 4 could be accepted. Clearly. with these programs alone we could have solidly booked the next decade of the telescope, never mind all the regular programs that also remain on the cutting edge.

Sadly, the Hubble will not last forever, and despite 22 years to get ready, we have nothing at all in the pipeline to replace it.

The links to the articles on Meryl Dorey were missing from the Discover Magazine website main page and, when that happens, contact often lags. I’m placing replies to responses here.
In response to Ken, I have placed many items on a number of websites about chemtrails. I didn’t place an item on Rense, I was probably quoted.
Gunnar seems intent on suggesting that I referred to individuals as anti God out of an overweaning regard for what I think. If someone is pro God and another disagrees with them, then that other is definitively anti God. Also, Gunnar doesn’t seem to be able to realize I didn’t say Plait proved a negative! I said that declaring that vaccines don’t cause autism would require proving a negative!
Note, though, how none of those claiming to respect “science” pointed out that claiming vaccines do not cause autism was invalid. How easily they bend rules for their own purposes.
In a more general sense, Plait manages to get an entire airline to stop airing the interview just by expressing his discontent. Intermittently, I would smell the rotten egg smell of a natural gas leak from a manhole near where I live and called the town health department about it. Trying to contact them repeatedly for more than four years, I never received a reply, nor did they even try to do anything about it. It was only after the steam pipe explosion in New York that they acted. Those in positions of money and influence don’t respond to “the public”. But, if you’re acting as a shill for pharmaceutical mega giants looking to make people sicker so they can sell them more recycled pterochamical waste they call “srugs”, you can get airlines to do whatever you want!
And how many defending vaccines even know what evidnece of techniques were used to “verify” that they were safe? And how many are saying the drug companies are right because they’re rich or the companies claim to be “scientific” or those defending vaccines simply despise out of hand those who don’t dismiss out of hand unconventional ideas? To be sure, now that the challenge has been made, the drug companies can make carefully sanitized versions of the “evidence” available so those who promote the drug companies getting obscenely richer can pretend they know what they’re talking about.
And how putridly “ironic” that Plait should say the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. Where was Ms. Dorey’s freedom respected? Plait and his ilk bloodthirstily eagerly invoke the idea of Constitutional guarantees only being applicable on government property! That’s a common tactic of the New World Order.
And consider Plait’s outrage at American Airlines saying people didn’t need to listen to the interview. The same ilk as the defenders of “science” here pushed for decades for the vicious degradation of culture, promoting everything from nudity to vulgarity in the media, saying if people didn’t like it, they didn’t need to look! How they change the rules they demand for others when it comes to their own wants.
“Science” said that the identical compositions of earth rocks and moon rocks was indisputable “proof” that a planetoid struck earth, hurling the material of the moon off. Now, it’s being said that that’s unreasonable since, if there was another body involved, the compositions should be different, there should be signs of another body! What was once called unquestionable “proof” is now shown to be short-sighted and shallow! It seems only a matter of time before the “uncontestable proof” that leads Plait to announce that they proved a negative will be shown to be illegitimate.

22! My goodness. I feel the way I feel when I see some of my younger cousins, the ones I babysat when they were very small, and wonder how it is they can be all grown up now. How can Hubble be 22? I feel old….

julianpenrod, if you can find this article to comment on, what keeps you from finding the American Airlines article and commenting on this? Your comments are not more likely to be read by the people you’re responding to when placed on a totally unrelated article which just happened to be on top at the time.